Jailbreak

Cydia

Siri is a powerful tool that accompanies all iPhone 4S devices and many jailbroken iOS 5 devices. The voice assistant can do almost anything, from setting reminders, to giving directions, to sending messages, and then some. Unfortunately, most of Siri’s location-based functionality is limited to the United States, as asking her to look for something when you are in a foreign country yields the following message: “I can only look for businesses, maps, and traffic in the United States, and when you’re using U.S. English. Sorry about that.”

If you would still like the freedom to search for businesses, restaurants, banks, and other places you may need to know the location of while abroad even when you’re not in the United States, then iOS developer Zaid Elkurdi has created an add-on for AssistantExtensions, dubbed International Locations for Siri, that will give Siri the ability to search for these useful places and then tell you how far away from them you are even when you’re not in the United States.

If you live in the United States and you aren’t familiar with your surroundings in a foreign country, then chances are you don’t know where to find the nearest bank, convenience store, or restaurant. This tweak is great for almost anyone, whether you’re traveling internationally or if you live in a country that isn’t the United States. International Locations for Siri doesn’t allow you to use Google Maps to view directions for anything outside of the United States as the add on was not created to work in that context – it was created only to provide distances from nearby places. United States visitors or residents can already use Siri to get directions from Google Maps.

We also asked the developer about his motivation behind making International Locations for Siri. His response:

Originally Posted by Zaid Elkurdi

Well I feel that Siri is a useful tool and local business searches are one of the more important functions that Siri provides. As Apple has neglected to include this feature for the majority of the world, I think that my enabling it with this tweak will make Siri much more useful for people outside of the U.S. At the moment, the context is slightly limited ("Where's the closest," "Show nearby," "Where am I," "Where can I get some food," etc.). I hope to make it as close to Apple's implementation as possible with my upcoming updates.

Right now the add on works in over 150 different countries and supports only English. The developer is working toward adding other languages in the future.

International Locations for Siri requires iOS 5 and Siri functionality and will work just fine with Spire. If you feel international access to having the ability to search for nearby places is an important asset, then this tweak is worth looking into. The add on will set you back 99˘ to grab your copy and it will automatically install AssistantExtensions if you don’t have it installed already. The add on is enabled and disabled on demand from the Settings application in the AssistantExtensions preferences pane.

Are there any other tweaks that offer similar functionality? Been out of the jailbreak scene for quite a bit so playing catch up. Would love to to find a way for Siri to work with Google Maps outside the US